Sabella’s 1MW D10 turbine was initially commissioned in 2015in the Fromveur Passage, a straitthat lies between Ushant Island and the Molène archipelago, off the coast of the French region of Brittany. After undergoing key technology upgrades, thetidal turbine was redeployed for the second time in October 2018.
Once again, the 400-tonne machine lies on the French seabed and captures the tide to provide renewable power to the 800 inhabitants ofUshant island. To optimise the turbine’s operation, QOS Energy and Sabella closely collaborated to develop specific data acquisition techniques and innovative analytics tailored to the constraints of the demanding sub-marine environment.
“Operating and maintaining a utility-scale tidal turbine at such depth is particularly challenging, and data collection and analysis plays a vital role in doing so successfully. QOS Energy’s data intelligence platform enables our O&M team to visualise critical KPIs such as water pressure, temperature, swell energy prediction, rotor speed or torque compared to power produced. We need this cutting-edge monitoring capability to be able to fully understand performance, and effectively control potential failures,”explained Jean-François Daviau, CEO of Sabella.
Sabella is among the very few companies in Europe that can provide commercially-ready tidal energy technology.Its D10 machine is designed to thrive in the harsh marine environment, and to be maintainable long-term. It boasts a simple and robust design, relying on key components redundancy to ensure a very high level of availability. Sabella’stechnology can be deployed as part of large tidal commercial arrays, as well as answer the energy needs of remote off-grid island communities.
“Tidal turbine technology has great potential for off-grid islands that can now harvest their abundant tidal resources,”said Daviau.“Unlike most other sources of clean power, tidal energy produces renewable power in a regular and predictable manner, enabling operators to reliably forecast power production over the full life-cycle of a project.”
Off-grid tidal energy represents a considerable and largely untapped market, considering that about 11,000 islands worldwide are permanently inhabited by a population in excess of 730 million people in total. In most cases, off-grid island communities that are also among the first victims of climate change, rely on expensive and polluting diesel-powered technologies to ensure power supply.
With an energy cost of energy per MWh that can be 5 to 10 times higher than in interconnected areas, tidal energy, potentially associated to other renewable sources and storage capabilities, is emerging as a sound economic model for off-grid islands.
“QOS Energy strongly believes that tidal energy will play an important part of the future clean energy mix, so we are very pleased to innovate with a pioneering company such as Sabella and make progress in the important field of tidal O&M. We believe that effective plant monitoring and optimisation will be instrumental in bringing this emerging technology from the margin to the mainstream,”concluded Jean-Yves BELLET, VP-CTO of QOS Energy.